1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatus for the measurement of optical path length changes between two plane mirror surfaces. More particularly, the invention relates to optical apparatus which is useful for high accuracy displacement metrology using interferometry.
2. The Prior Art
An interferometer is a basic instrument for most high accuracy displacement measurements in dilatometry, material stability studies, the machine tool industry, and in the semiconductor fabrication industry. One type of interferometer representative of the current state-of-the-art is the differential plane mirror interferometer which measures the optical path length changes between two external mirrors and which is described in R. R. Baldwin and G. J. Siddall, "A double pass attachment for the linear and plane interferometer," Proc. SPIE, Vol. 480, pp. 78-83 (May 1984). A conventional differential plane mirror interferometer consists of a fixed plane mirror and a movable plane mirror, which form the interferometer cavity, and auxiliary optical components (retroreflectors, wave plates, mirrors, beamsplitters). This type of interferometer has an inherent optical resolution of one quarter of the wavelength of the light used and has particularly high stability which is necessary for the ever increasing demand for improved accuracy. Thus, it is particularly insensitive to any tilt of the plane mirrors and motion of the auxiliary optical components.
The conventional differential plane mirror interferometer is, however, overly complicated, requiring many auxiliary optical components thereby subjecting the measurement beams to many reflections. These drawbacks ultimately limit the accuracy that can be achieved due to a lower signal-to-noise ratio in the measurement signal as a result of reduced optical beam power and polarization leakage.
The present invention retains the basic plane mirror interferometer cavity of the conventional differential plane mirror; however, the use of a shear plate in the present invention not only reduces the number of optical elements but also reduces the number of reflections by nearly 50%. The improvements of the present invention thusly further increase the accuracy that can be attained with this type of interferometer.